Saturday Final Nationals: Scarce Samplings for Burn-Off Returns of ‘Doubt’ and ‘Still Star-Crossed’

NBC led Saturday night in total viewers (3.12 million) and tied Fox for tops in adults 18-49 (0.5 rating/3 share) and adults 25-54 (0.7/3). The Boston Celtics-L.A. Lakers “NBA Summer League” game — the second game for Lakers rookie Lonzo Ball — propelled ESPN to No. 1 in adults 18-34 (approx. 0.43 rating). Celtics-Lakers is the first NBA Summer League telecast to ever surpass 1 million viewers (1.11 million), and set yet another new viewer record for the summer sport, exceeding the previous record set by the Clippers-Lakers telecast (879,000 viewers) from the night prior.

ABC and CBS lagged with burn-off episodes of short-lived series “Still Star-Crossed” (pulled off of Mondays by ABC in June) and legal drama “Doubt” (taken off the CBS Wednesday night schedule after just two weeks in February).

For the entire week of July 3-9, 2017 in Total Day (8 p.m. to 5:59 a.m.), Adult Swim is up +1 percent in viewership (0.806 million vs. 0.801 million) and down -0.2 percent among Adults 18-49 (481,000 vs. 482,000) from one week earlier; the network is also down -19 percent in viewership (0.806 million vs. 0.992 million) and down -15 percent among Adults 18-49 (481,000 vs. 565,000) from the same week one year ago (July 4-10, 2016). (http://programminginsider.com/?p=18020)